The unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West on Russia have frozen cooperation between Russian universities and their American and European partners. Despite the fact that many of them express their willingness to resume joint work in the future, once the geopolitical situation stabilizes and restrictive measures are lifted, it does not seem likely to happen soon.
This situation forces our scientific and educational community to intensify cooperation with institutions of higher education located in other regions of the world. This includes the Middle East. Last December, for example, rectors Vladimir Litvinenko and Mohammad Moazeni of St. Petersburg Mining University and Shiraz University signed an agreement on strategic cooperation. Among the agreements reached are joint research, increased global mobility of students, graduate students, professors and scientists, and the creation of a Russian-Iranian association of leading technical universities.
A similar agreement with the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI) of the Islamic Republic is under development. The parties are preparing to create bilateral scientific groups to intensify research in the field of improving the efficiency of hydrocarbon production, its involvement in deep processing, reducing the anthropogenic load on the nature. To improve understanding with new partners the St. Petersburg Mining University has created a website in Persian, the fifth, following English, Spanish and Chinese.
And with whom else do representatives of Iranian higher education and scientists from this country cooperate? After all, for more than 40 years they have been living under sanction pressure, which, depending on the political situation, sometimes gets stronger and sometimes gets weaker, but nevertheless, it does not stop. It would seem that such circumstances should have led to isolation, but this is not the case.
For example, scientists from Shiraz and Bologna University are participating in the excavations of Persepolis, the oldest city in Iran. For 12 years, they have worked together to find architectural, cultural and artistic treasures from the era of the Achaemenid Empire, which was destroyed by Alexander the Great. Through this Herculean effort they have restored the original appearance of the monumental gates of this ancient citadel, built in honor of Cyrus the Great's conquest of Babylon. Other valuable finds include the identification of the foundations of the two main towers on the northeast and northwest sides of the fortress wall.
The Iranians are interested not only in their past, but also in their future. The other day a specialized meeting on "Iran and Japan" was held at Shiraz University with the participation of the Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Land of the Rising Sun, Professor Nobumasa Akiyama. In his speech, he noted that the Islamic Republic "is not a completely isolated country," that is, it "is not like North Korea, whose borders are closed and whose economy is in decline." Moreover, he called Shiraz University one of the leading universities in attracting foreign students and said it was ready to work together to demonstrate its "high scientific potential.
Iran's Petroleum Research Institute is also active in the international arena. On Tuesday, March 14, its leadership hosted a delegation of energy and mining companies from Oman. Cooperation in upstream and downstream sectors was the main subject of the talks. The guests and the hosts presented their achievements in this field and discussed the prospects of cooperation in such an important area as development of full value-added chains. That is, industrial enterprises that are able to provide the entire technological cycle, from the search and extraction of raw materials to the production of consumer goods.
Last week, Azim Kalantariasl, president of Iran's Petroleum Research Institute, held a working meeting with Dalir Juma, minister of energy and water resources of Tajikistan. The two sides expressed their desire for comprehensive development of relations between the two countries, including in the field of projects related to breakthrough technologies and environmental protection.
Last December Mr. Azim Kalantariasl as a member of the Iranian delegation took part in the International Forum on Nature Management and Preservation of the World Natural Heritage, which gathered representatives of 70 countries. It was organized by the St. Petersburg Mining University and the International Competence Centre for Mining Education under the auspices of UNESCO. The President of RIPI noted that the hallmark of Russia's first technical university is "an extraordinary combination of historical achievements and modern infrastructure, which allows Mining University to look to the future with confidence."